The Storm

CHAPTER 48

KURT AUSTIN HAD NO IDEA WHAT THE PAIN MAKER WAS, but with a name like that he had to find out. But first he had to deal with being a celebrity.

In a far cry from their initial reception, he and Leilani had become honored guests on Pickett’s Island. The fact that he was their first American visitor in seventy years was one thing, the fact that he knew the current Harry Truman had the tribesmen in their military fatigues treating him like MacArthur returning to the Philippines.

After giving Leilani and him fresh water to drink and allowing them to shower and change into fatigues like the other islanders wore, the men of Pickett’s Island treated them to a meal of fresh-caught fish along with mangoes, bananas and coconut milk from the trees that grew in abundance on the island.

While they ate, Tautog and three others regaled them with stories, explaining how all that they had and all that they knew had come from Captain Pickett and Sergeant Watkins. They didn’t say it in so many words, but it seemed like Pickett and Watkins had created their civilization out of thin air and were regarded almost like mythical spirits.

With dinner finished, Kurt and Leilani were taken on a tour of the island.

Kurt saw remarkable ingenuity in the setup. Structures built of rusting steel plate hid everywhere among the trees. Trenches and tunnels linked the supply-filled cave, lookout posts and areas with cisterns dug to catch rainwater. He saw material from every part of the ship in use somewhere: old boilers, piping and steel beams. Even the John Bury’s bell had been moved to a high point on the island where it could be rung to warn others of an emergency or in case of attack by the Japanese.

“I can’t believe no one’s told them,” Leilani whispered as they walked beneath the palm trees a few paces behind their guides.

“I don’t think they get a lot of visitors,” Kurt said.

“Shouldn’t we say something?”

Kurt shook his head. “I think they don’t want to know.”

“How could they not want to know?”

“They’re hiding from the world,” Kurt said. “It must have been part of Pickett’s strategy to keep this Pain Maker machine safe.”

She nodded, seeming to understand that. “How about we get out of here and let them keep hiding,” she said. “This is an island, after all. These people have to have boats. Maybe we could borrow one.”

Kurt knew they had boats because Tautog had said the camp actually included two other islands, which could be seen only from the high point of the central peak. He figured that meant a range of at least fifteen, maybe twenty miles. If a boat could handle that, it could get to the shipping lanes. If that’s where one planned to go.

“They do have boats,” Kurt said. “But we’re not going anywhere, just me.”

Leilani looked as though she’d been jabbed with a pin or something, her eyebrows shot up, her posture stiffened, she stopped in her tracks. “Excuse me?”

“You’re safe here,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean I want to stay. This place is the bizarro version of Gilligan’s Island and I’m not about to become Ginger.”

“Trust me,” Kurt said, “you’re more of a Mary Ann. But that’s not why you’re sticking around. I need you out of harm’s way while I try to reach Aqua-Terra.”

Now she paused as if trying to process what he’d said. “You’re going back? Didn’t we almost drown trying to get away from there?”

“And we landed here,” Kurt said. “Things are looking up.”

“Don’t you think going back to the floating island controlled by terrorists will reverse that trend?”

“Not if I go with rifles and the element of surprise.”

She studied him for a second, seeming to pick up on his thoughts. “Your friends on the island?”

He nodded.

“Not only that,” Kurt said, “Jinn is there. And he’s up to something bigger than terrorism or gunrunning or money laundering.”

“Like what?”

“This whole thing started with an investigation of the water temps. The weather pattern over India has become unstable. They’re dealing with two years of decreasing rains, and this year’s looking to be the driest yet. Your brother was studying the current and temperature patterns because we believed the cause might lie there, in a previously undiscovered El Niño/La Niña effect.”

She nodded. “And he found those little machines of Jinn’s spread out through the ocean.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “And when they started reflecting the sunlight, I could feel heat coming off the water. The two things have to be connected. I’m not sure why but Jinn’s messing around with the temperature gradient, and the butterfly effect is producing horrible results down the road.”

By now they’d arrived at the eastern side of the island on a low bluff no more than twenty feet high. Ahead of them was a wide stretch of sand with a far more accommodating approach through the reef than the one Kurt had taken from the north.

He hoped they’d finally arrived at the one thing he wanted to see.

Tautog waved his hand across the open beach. “Captain Pickett told us if the Japs come, they would attack here.”

That made sense to Kurt. It looked like an easy beach to hit.

“So he had us bring the Pain Maker to this side of the island.”

Tautog motioned to a group of his men and they moved a fence made of thatch to one side. Behind it, recessed into a cave, was a strange-looking device. It reminded Kurt of a speaker system. Four feet wide and perhaps a foot tall, the rectangular shape was divided into rows of hexagonal pods, four rows of ten. There was a ceramic quality to the pods.

“Apply the power,” Tautog said. Behind him two of his men started pulling back and forth on a lever-type system. They looked like lumberjacks working a log with a large two-handed saw, but they were actually accelerating a flywheel. The flywheel was attached to generator coils, and in a few seconds both the wheel and the dynamo in the generator were spinning rapidly.

A crackling buzz began to emanate from hexagonal pods in the speaker box. Out on the water, a hundred feet away, a ripple began to form, and in moments a fifty-foot swath of water was shaking and splattering as if it was being boiled or agitated somehow.

Tautog waved another hand. Along the wall of the bluff seven additional fences of the camouflaging material were removed. As the generators in these units were cranked up, the whole beachfront entered a similar state of agitation.

Kurt noticed fish fleeing the onslaught, launching themselves over one another like salmon racing up a ladder. A pair of night birds dove after them, thinking them easy prey, but turned away suddenly as if they’d hit a force field.

Some kind of vibration was definitely issuing from the speaker boxes, though all Kurt heard was a crackling buzz like high-voltage lines carrying too much power. “Sound waves.”

“Yes,” Tautog said. “If the Japanese come, they will never get off the beach.”

Kurt noticed the birds and fish were okay. “It doesn’t appear to be lethal.”

“No. But the causing of pain will bring them to their knees. They will make easy targets.”

“A weapon made out of sound,” Leilani said. “It almost seems crazy, but you see it in nature already. On dives with Kimo I’ve seen dolphins use their echo-location to stun fish into a stupor before snatching them in their jaws.”

Kurt had heard of that but never witnessed it. He knew of sound weapons from another angle. “The military has been working on systems like this over the past few decades. The plan is to use them as nonlethal crowd-control devices, saving the need for all those rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. But I didn’t know the concept went as far back as the Second World War.”

“Any idea how it works?” Leilani asked.

“Just a guess,” Kurt said. “Simple harmonic vibration. The sound waves travel at slightly different speeds and slightly different angles. They converge in the zone where the water is jumping, amplifying the effect. Almost like a beam of sound.”

“I’m glad you didn’t use it on us,” Leilani said to Tautog.

“You landed on the wrong beach,” Tautog replied matter-of-factly.

Kurt was glad for that. “One point for hasty navigation.”

As he watched the water buzzing, a new idea began to form in his mind, but to risk it he first needed to know how effective the Pain Maker really was.

“I want to test it.”

“We can demonstrate on the prisoner if you like.”

“No,” Kurt said, “not on the prisoner. On me.”

Tautog regarded him strangely. “You are a curious person, Kurt Austin.”

“I do what I have to in order to survive and get the job done,” Kurt said. “Other than that, I’m not interested in seeing anyone suffer. Even a former enemy.”

Tautog pondered this, but he voiced neither agreement nor disagreement. He flipped a switch, the speaker box near them shut off and a gap in the wall of sound appeared over the beach and out onto the bay.

Leilani grabbed his arm. “Are you nuts?”

“Probably,” Kurt said, “but I need to know.”

“I warn you,” Tautog said, “the impact will hurt a great deal.”

“Strange as it sounds,” Kurt replied, “I honestly hope it does.”

A minute later Kurt was on the sand at the water’s edge. He noticed a few fish floating motionless in the waves. Apparently they hadn’t all escaped unscathed.

Around him, the sound waves from the other speakers reverberated and continued to vibrate the air and water, but most of the energy was in a range beyond human hearing. What he could hear were ghostly and ethereal sounds.

Kurt looked back up the beach to the bluff. He saw Leilani with her hands clasped in front of her mouth. Tautog stood proudly, and Kurt steeled himself like a gladiator about to do battle.

“Okay,” Kurt said.

Tautog threw the switch. Kurt felt an instant wave of pain through every fiber of his body as if all his muscles were cramping up at the same time. His head rang, his eyes hurt, the ethereal buzz he’d heard before was now a wailing sound he felt through his jaw and into his skull. He thought his eardrums would burst, and maybe his eyeballs too.

With all the considerable strength and willpower he possessed, Kurt stayed on his feet and tried to fight his way forward. It felt like he was pulling a great stone block behind him or pushing one up the beach. He could barely move.

He made it one step and then another, and then the pain became unbearable and he collapsed in the sand, covering his ears and head.

“Turn it off!” he heard Leilani shout. “You’re killing him.”

At another time and place Kurt might have chalked those words up to female hysterics, but as the waves of pain racked every millimeter of his body he thought she might be right.

The speaker shut down and the agony vanished like a rubber band breaking—one instant it was everywhere, the next it was gone.

It left behind fatigue and a feeling of complete and utter exhaustion. Kurt lay on the sand unable to do any more than breathe.

Leilani ran to him and dropped down in the sand beside him.

“Are you okay?” she asked, rolling him over onto his side. “Are you all right?”

He nodded.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t I look it?” he managed.

“Not really,” she said.

“I am,” he insisted. “I swear.”

“I haven’t known you very long,” she said, helping him to a sitting position, “but you’re really not normal. Are you?”

Even through the exhaustion Kurt had to laugh. He was hoping for something like I don’t want to lose you or I’ve started to care for you or a similar sentiment along those lines.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“I really thought you were going somewhere else with that,” he said. “But that doesn’t make you wrong.”

She smiled.

“How far did I get?” It felt like he’d climbed Mount Everest with a heavy pack on his shoulders.

“All of two feet,” she said.

“That’s it?”

She nodded. “The whole thing lasted only a couple of seconds.”

It had seemed like an eternity.

Around them the other beams shut down. Tautog came to see them, arriving as the first undisturbed wave lapped the beach.

“I agree with her,” he said. “You are not even close to normal.”

Kurt felt his strength returning. “Well, as long as we’ve settled that question, my next request shouldn’t come as any surprise.”

Kurt put out his hand. Tautog grabbed it and pulled Kurt up to his feet.

“And what request would that be?”

“I need a boat,” Kurt said, “a dozen rifles and one of these machines.”

“You are planning to rescue your friends,” Tautog guessed.

“Yes,” Kurt said.

Tautog smiled. “Do you really think we will let you go alone?”